


Celtic Cross

by Pi (Rhea)



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tarot reading for Magnus. Post Eulogy, spoilers through episode three of season two. Lead up to the events of Pavor Nocturnus (ep.5 season 2), contains no spoilers for episode five, but it is useful to have some knowledge of that episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celtic Cross

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afterthree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterthree/gifts).



> Thanks to my roommate Jenny for being an unexpected, and fabulous beta.  
> Author's note: I actually did a tarot reading for this character. I used the structure of the reading/cards to create the story.

Magnus may run the Sanctuary, but she doesn’t believe in magic. There are more things in the universe than she can understand, beyond human conception. Clarke’s third law holds true, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” even more so for abnormals. They are beyond the accepted scope of human understanding already. But, somehow, everything has a scientific explanation. She’s seen things she couldn’t explain, immediately, but for all that abnormals exist there is no such thing as magic. The rules of the universe still stand.

The carefully shuffled deck placed neatly aside, Magnus turns over the first card. Magnus has done this so many times before she knows the cards and their meanings from memory. This is not magic, just chance, but when the cards ring true it helps focus ones’ thoughts. A sort of meditation.

Six of swords: clarity, objective thinking, a time for reflection after trouble. Magnus has much to think about: what it means to be alone, again in the world. In truth she knows she’s not alone. Will is here and Henry, Nikola and The Big Guy, and somewhere out there John. But Ashley…Everyone she cares about will die one day, perhaps not soon, but someday. Somehow, she had thought Ashley, _her_ daughter, would be safe. She had believed a combination of the right blood might give Helen something to live for besides endless work. No parent should have to bury their child.

It has been months. Magnus has given up the search, much to Will’s relief, and buried an empty casket. Well, not empty, but lacking in tangible proof that Magnus is wrong. She still doesn’t want to admit it. Magnus never believed in ghosts, she’d lived all those years immersed in the study of the abnormal, none of it magic, all of it science, no ghosts. And yet she knows she saw Ashley. True it could have been her overstressed mind, no sleep, no appetite, just the driving belief that she could not, would not, be alone. Her vision had been so clouded. And then, there Ashley was. For once, the first time in many years, Magnus had just believed. And now perhaps Ashley is dead. The weight of it hangs about her shoulders and heart, a deep heavy cloak. But Magnus understands it.

Seven of Pentacles. Magnus is not surprised that time is once again what crosses her. Waiting has never been her strong suit. Her extended age has taught her patience, but it does not come naturally. Waiting years is something she cannot do. This card is what might have been 20 years of teaching, nurturing and loving, a lifetime waiting for the right time. And each of those handful of years brimming with more light and joy than Magnus could ever remember, since before. In Ashley, Magnus had not just daughter but a partner. Ashley had changed everything and Magnus doesn’t think she can go back.

The Death card is her distant past. Again an undeniable truth. Magnus’ rebirth defines her, as it does all the Five. That point of transformation was indeed a new beginning. Death is not a card to fear, representing as much new life as the end of the old. Helen is a perversion of Death. The reverse: a “not death”, never allowing for the natural course of things, stagnation, endless, waiting grief. No end in sight. Morbid as it is, no matter how she plays the card, the answer is grief.

The next card makes her laugh. Will would find it funny. The inverse of Judgment: not letting go. Helen often wonders where that month went. She had been so busy trying to find Ashley, any reason to cling to hope. “But even now we must hope on.” And there it was the intrinsic futility when beyond all doubt hope is finished. Everyone else had seen it. Helen remembers the day John came to her, urging her to have the funeral. Their matching black attire, the warm sunlight falling through the window to pool on the floor between them. Helen saw it for the first time: the hopelessness of her vain belief that she was not alone. She saw the truth on Druitt’s face. He had loved their daughter, maybe as much as she had. In a way Ashley’s existence had brought him back. If Helen was alone, Druitt was more so. He had no Sanctuary, no chosen family to support him, and in that moment Helen feared. She feared for John, bent on revenge, seeking the time he never had with his daughter through the blood of the Cabal. Loneliness had aided his madness before. Helen could only hope he knew the Sanctuary was his as well. She hadn’t said it. He’d been gone as soon as she’d _seen_ him, perhaps not wanting to hear her sympathy. Still, he had come back.

Helen knows her goal too before she flips the card.  The Emperor: control, structure, logic. It’s what the Sanctuary needs right now, a plan, rebuilding, and organization. There are still more refugees and the other Sanctuaries to reestablish and coordinate with. It’s almost more work than when they’d implemented the Sanctuary system in the first place. There are more people affected and less time to do the work in. They can’t build their support step by step this time. They have to stay in control, to prove they’re still working, that the threat has been handled. Magnus has always been good at detail, but it still means more time and labor. Control.

The best outcome too is order and control, the King of Swords. Magnus hopes this is true, good advice and guidance, new theories and ideas a newer, safer, balanced Sanctuary serving as the world needs. It has always been Helen’s goal for the Sanctuary to be a trusted, open space, a safe haven for all. Even rocked as they have been, it is a hopeful card she brushes with her fingertips.

Helen disbelieves the card of her own feelings. Happiness, harmony and affection, compassion, Helen believes she has these things but they are below the surface now. Still the Queen of Cups speaks of close kept secrets, intuition, and the spiritual. Helen stopped praying a long time ago. Watching religion shift and change its meanings, dealing with creatures thought to be evil. Helen doesn’t believe the way she did as a child when she would watch the light glow through the stained glass at sunset, waiting for her mother to finish speaking with her pastor. Helen does not see herself as a daydreamer, a poet or artisan, but she has been, and will forever be, a mother. Is it a flaw to have devoted so much love and energy to one person? Helen cannot believe that.

How others think about her is worrisome. The Knight of Pentacles inverted, bad work ethic, sloppiness, getting lost. Helen _has_ been lost it is true. She’s only now finding where to go. The Cabal taken care of by John and Nikola, the Sanctuaries starting to grow again, space and time all before her, and Helen knows she has to do _something_ with it.

Her hopes and fears are all to clear: Strength inverted. If Helen is a coward… Fear itself is one of Helen’s fears. To be afraid is not to be cowardly. But the paralysis of fear, the inability to do anything is something that haunts Magnus all the more since Ashley’s death. What if she could have done more, what if in her fear for Ashley she missed something that could have saved her? The thought doesn’t bear thinking. And this, this is her true outcome: the Six of Cups inverted. Not a respite, or time of renewal after emotional upheaval, but the heavy weight of all her memories. Thoughts of Ashley won’t tear her heart forever. Even now she holds memories that make her smile. But the truth, the curse of immortality will always hang around her neck. _Everyone I love may someday die. I will always be left alone._

Magnus stares at the last card. She had looked into ending her gift, her curse, before. Back before Ashley’s birth, back in the early days of the Sanctuary, starting a project bigger than a lifetime, because what other way could she spend all that time alone and stay sane? She remembers a report she’d read, the one about the Mayans. That research she’d done so long ago, before the Sanctuary, her life’s purpose, had come in between. But now, now Magnus at least wants to know her options. She has time yet, and work to do. She can’t leave Will or John, or Henry, but she wants to know. She reshuffles the cards, putting them neatly away, then turns to her computer to book a flight. 


End file.
